Upon birth, infants are given a name to provide a means of identifying them throughout their lives. A person's name is generally unique, but not always. However, each person has a number of physical and behavioral characteristics that do make him/her unique as to all other persons on the earth. Even identical twins have physical characteristics that are capable of distinguishing one twin from the other.
It has been customary for most individuals to provide some type of identification in order to proceed with some want or desire. Some situations require only the simple facial recognition before they can proceed. Other situations require a documentary type of identification, such as a driver's license or other official identification. In other environments where a high degree of security is required in order to prevent unauthorized entry, people are preauthorized and assigned a special pass. Various types of passes have a magnetic strip with a code which, when sensed by a card swipe device, and checked with a database storing all of the authorized codes, allows entry of the person having possession of the pass.
Unique numbers have been widely used to identify persons and distinguish each person from the others in the financial field. Bank account numbers are used by banks and savings institutions to uniquely identify the customers. Credit card numbers are used by credit lending institutions to identify their customers and clients. Social Security numbers are assigned by the United States federal government to each citizen to identify the citizens and maintain an account of funds that may be used by the individuals upon retirement from work. Every utility provider and other vendor assign each customer an account number which is the index used for accessing the customers' records.
A necessary item for the personal and professional fulfillment of many individuals is a computer of one type or another. In a majority of situations, a password is required in order to prevent unauthorized persons from operating another person's computer. In this specialized age of information, the access to information by authorized persons has become extremely important. The administration costs of many businesses have become significant in administering passwords to allow authorized persons access to predefined information, and prevent others from gaining access thereto.
In all of the foregoing methods for assigning an identification to individuals, there exist ways to circumvent the uniqueness of the identification. If some types of identification are lost by the original owner, and found by a stranger, the possession by the stranger of the identification is many times sufficient to allow the stranger to gain access to the original owner's rights associated with the identification. In other instances, the knowledge of another's identification number is sufficient to allow unauthorized access or use provided by the identification number. While the facial identification of a person is a very good indicia of an individual, people often require access to a product or service without being personally present. In addition, the identification by personal recognition of facial features by an attendant also requires that the attendant have stored in available records other correct and reliable information including a picture and other identifying features of the individuals of interest. Because of the threat of terrorism, the federal government presently requires each airline passenger to present some form of picture identification granted by a reliable office of the state or federal government.
It is generally recognized that the greater the risk of loss, the greater the security requirements become. In other words, when large sums of currency are being transferred, financial institutions require a highly secure means of transferring the funds, both as to the financial transaction network itself, and also with respect to the persons using and controlling the financial network. Highly secret environments, both of the government and commercial types, require higher levels of security in ascertaining that each individual is who he/she purports to be.
When the security requirements are stringent, reliance is often placed on more sophisticated means of verifying the identity of individuals. Fingerprints are a means of verifying the identity of individuals. Other technological advancements have allowed unique personal identifications to be made by retina scans, iris scans, blood vein mapping, voice scans, etc., all of which are highly reliable, but require specialized equipment that is not cost effective for every potential user. In addition, there is not available a database of these unique physical features for each person. It is realized that in order to sense the physical feature of interest and ascertain that the person is who he/she purports to be, a comparison must be made between the sensed physical feature and data previously stored in a reliable database relating to the person's unique physical feature.
From the foregoing, it can be seen that the reliability of the records or database is of vital importance in verifying the identity of a person. In other words, unscrupulous persons can alter the records or the database to allow a false positive identification to be made. The communication link between the database and the remote site requesting the identification information must also be secure and reliable. If the communication link is not secure, then it is possible that a request for identification information can be intentionally rerouted, and false identification information can be introduced to respond to the request. The ability of persons highly adept with computer techniques to spy on networks and then to hack into the network to find information represents a constant danger to electronic networks and equipment.
Identity theft is possible only because information can be easily obtained from a victim, and used by a thief purporting to be the victim. In addition, the fraud perpetrated by the thief is unintentionally allowed to be continued by merchants and clerks who are either lax in requiring the proper identification to be presented, or lack the proper database of identification information for comparison with the identity data presented by the thief. The scope of damage resulting from identity theft is enormous and continues to expand because of the lack of better identification verification techniques, and because the burden of loss is presently accepted by the merchants and consumers without a unified protest.
It can be seen from the foregoing that a need exists for improving the quality of identification of persons. Another need exists for a method of associating the level of security required by the situation, with a trust level of the identification sensor which senses a person's unique characteristics. Another need exists for providing a highly reliable enrollment database which stores the identification characteristics of persons, and which stores the trust levels of the various types of biometric sensors. Another need exists for a method of correlating the enrollment data of a person with the trust level of the sensor and providing a response concerning a score representing the accuracy that the person is who he/she purports to be.